Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

I have never read any of Philip Davies' writings, but my understanding from widely-available general-knowledge sources is that he was a British biblical scholar and archaeologist who was born in 1945, and died on May 31, 2018. He was closely associated with the movement known as The Copenhagen School (which detractors characterize as "biblical minimalism"). The Copenhagen School was a group of scholars maintaining that the Bible's account of events is not supported by any archaeological evidence so far unearthed, and is, to the contrary, undermined by that evidence, and therefore cannot be trusted as history.

According to those same sources, Davies maintained that academic research into the historicity of Jesus' existence was damaged by those who accepted with certainty the gospel accounts of Jesus' life (which he characterized as "rather fragile historical evidence"), and that, if more biblical scholars would recognize that Jesus' existence is not entirely certain, it would "nudge Jesus scholarship toward academic respectability."

He produced several written works, but I am not aware of any existing biography written about him or his life.

October 09 2018 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report